Welcome to Compliance Hot Spots, our weekly snapshot on white-collar, regulatory and compliance news and trends. Today, a new study finds that the SEC's whistleblower program is paying large sums to the agency's own former attorneys. Plus, King & Spalding snags a top CFIUS lawyer and Paul Weiss jumps into the fray on former President Donald Trump's response to the FBI search of his Florida club. Please get in touch with tips and feedback. Contact me at [email protected] and @AGoudsward on Twitter.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission building in Washington, D.C. January 5, 2019. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

SEC Whistleblower Program Pays Millions to Former Agency Lawyers, Study Finds 

It's good work if you can get it.

Work as a federal agency lawyer, use your experience working at that agency to market yourself to clients in private practice, and then use those clients to continue getting paid by your former agency.

That's essentially what a new study says is happening with the SEC's whistleblower program. An analysis by Alexander Platt, an associate professor at the University of Kansas Law School, found that whistleblowers who retained counsel received substantially higher awards on average than those without, and of those who hired lawyers, a small group of repeat players—many of whom once worked at the SEC—was by far the most successful.